Sega Ages – Sonic The Hedgehog – Review

2 min readOctober 15, 2018

It must be that time of year again, where we are treated to yet another release of the original Sonic game. This time, the Hedgehog has made it’s way to the Nintendo Switch, via M2, a game developer with a lot of experience emulating Sega titles. Now, we’ve already had Sonic Mania released on the Switch, which I personally loved and thought was an absolutely fantastic title. From Sonic Mania, M2 have pulled out a few tweaks to bring the original game up to speed with modern gaming. Well, slightly.

In this iteration of the classic Sonic game, you can now use the fantastic “Drop Dash” mechanic. This may not sound like much of an addition, but if you’re a fan of this game like me, you’ll know that gaining speed after slowing down has always been a little bit of a task. Now, you can pick up speed much quicker, and this really does make the game feel a lot more up to date, and makes the game play a lot smoother than it’s older counterparts. If you don’t like this feature however, you can always simply turn it off in the menu, to go back to the version you know and love.

Aside from the drop dash, the gameplay hasn’t changed at all, and it feels just like the original in pretty much every way. As someone who loves the original game, I’m glad they kept to the original as much as they did, as I can now play the game I love, anywhere.

There’s a few different graphical settings in the game, you can add CRT filters and you can also change the aspect ratio. Now, obviously the original was meant to be played in 4:3, but personally, I loved being able to play this fullscreen in handheld mode on my Switch. The game didn’t really feel stretched, and the graphic still felt very true to the original, even in the wrong aspect ratio.

Another addition to this updated classic, is Save States. This is a must have for any emulation now, as it means you can pick up where you left off. Now, some people would complain that this is not how the game is meant to be played, but if that’s the case…Don’t save your game!

There’s not too much else to say about this game. If you liked the original, you’ll like this. If you haven’t played this before but loved Sonic Mania, I’d definitely recommend picking this up, so you can see where it all began.

All in all, a fantastic game as it has always been, and a fantastic port with plenty of options so you can play the game how you want.